In an interesting (and heartbreaking, for some) report by CNBC, it has been confirmed that HP will not be coming up with any Windows Phone 7 devices (which invalidates the info provided during the Windows Phone 7 launch event, which was before HP bought over Palm). Instead, they’ll be focusing on getting WebOS phones (and tablets, duh) out… in fact, we did mention mid this week that WebOS 2.0 will be coming by the end of this year, presumably with at least one device running the operating system (PalmPad anyone?!).
And what will happen to the iPAQ brand? Well, I hope HP addresses and answers that next…
Looks like there’s plenty going on lately at Hewlett Packard; with the spotlights being on Palm and the HP Slate. HP has recently mentioned that the HP Slate (which runs Windows 7) will not be targeting the mass market but more on the corporate/enterprise sector instead. Essentially, you could say the HP Slate is going to be aimed at companies wanting a “super-lite” keyboard-less, Intel Atom-ized version of the pricey Elitebook 2740p. But then what of regular consumers? Is HP gonna just let them run off to Apple stores to buy iPads?
Well, that’s the thing. HP has been strangely quiet about their consumer version of the Slate, which will likely be a Palm WebOS powered tablet. So far, the only hints they’ve dropped are the trademark application for the PalmPad name (though I won’t be surprised if they went for “PalmSlate” next) and to a lesser extent, talking about WebOS 2.0 being on track for an end-of-the-year (presumably before the holidays, if HP wants to capitalize on Black Friday and Christmas sales).
It seems that we’re hearing about Palm almost everyday lately, which is a good sign. Fortune has just confirmed that Jon Rubinstein (Palm’s CEO, and of course Palm is now part of HP) talked about WebOS 2.0 coming later this year (2010). Hopefully it’ll be as great for productivity as it will be awesome for handheld gaming (as HP’s Rahul Sood implied in a blog post just two days ago).
In other Palm-related news, it was also mentioned today that Palm will become a sub-brand under HP (just like what happened to other companies that HP bought over, such as Rahul’s Voodoo PC gaming computer company). While this move is not unexpected, I cannot help but wonder about the fate of the iPAQ brand. Perhaps this is a sign that WebOS devices will be sold under the “HP Palm” name while they will revive the iPAQ line sometime down the road to run Windows Phone 7? Afterall, Microsoft did include HP as one of the companies during the announcement of Windows Phone 7 earlier this year…
As if the iPad name wasn’t/isn’t bad enough (remember the jokes about the name when Apple first announced the iPad?), now it seems everyone’s following the suit! Today, Lenovo unveiled their plans to release their Android-running LePad tablet by the end of this year (the name LePad is probably “Lenovo Pad” for short, but could easily be mistaken and confused for something else by the French, due to its French-sounding name). Anyway, there could be no better a time for such news from Lenovo to break – coming less than 24 hours after it was discovered HP filed for a trademark for the name PalmPad.
And on we go to the name “Palm Pad”, which we can say with almost 100% certainty will be a tablet form-factor device running WebOS (and most likely an HP-tweaked and HP-design-sprinkled version of WebOS). The question is when? And will the Palm Pad take the place of the planned Windows-running HP Slate as a direct competitor to Apple’s iPad? No details there either, but I have a good feeling that the answer for the latter question will be YES, since Windows 7 can be a potentially clunky OS on a low-powered, slim tablet device and everyone’s been screaming for a WebOS so much, that I’m pretty sure someone at HP would have taken note.
Hey, did you hear? It’s true! Now you can stop dreaming and really have your WebOS slate/tablet in the “near future”, thanks to confirmation directly from HP via a press release reporting their Q2 2010 financial results and also their Twitter feed (they have a habit of placing the most exciting things in the oddest of places, don’t they? Like listing new processors in service manuals). HP has also mentioned that we should also expect WebOS (or some sort of variation/edition) to make its way into printers (huh?!) as well – I presume these will be all-in-one printers as well as high end business printers where using a dedicated OS would come in handy the most.
Strange enough, they haven’t mentioned anything about stuffing WebOS into digital picture frames yet… I was kinda expecting that one.
